There is a girl who lives by a conduct neither too strict nor too lenient. Her fair figure ambulates in the moderate sized space she is residing, a sole inhabitant. Loose waves of hair circle her shoulders gracefully as she meanders along quite so peacefully, not a tinge of rush seen to be expressed on the face. Behind these closed doors, the whitewashed perimeter is one befitting.

 

An apartment lot that is rented by the one pursuing higher education, the girl finds herself in an area comfortable. A place too small and one would become the centre of attention – yet a place too large will result in being consumed in its daunting emptiness. Such irregularities and anomalies should not be permitted to exist unless inadvertently faulted by human erring.

 

The svelte female stretches a morning sigh, colouring the atmosphere with a pale brush of today’s expectations. Pastel bedroom slippers patter down the hallway, the destination proven to be the kitchen. Eyes scan the insides of the refrigerator, noting the materials wanted for the preparation of edible energies. Verdant vegetables and bright fruits are taken out for the makings of what would be a delicious salad, with the knife’s utility maximised to a rather prominent extent. The slight tilt of the head, the angled weapon that shreds. She lifts her arms eventually to tie the wisps of hair into something manageable but subsequently realises that she cannot do so. A low hum escapes the delicate throat, observance carried out on the billowing curtains against the closed windows.

 

A mental click in the working mind proposes the next action. She directs her head in an upward degree and neatly descries the chin of another fellow human being, with thick hair compressed in a gravitational motion. She stares blankly in the supposed direction for a little while, his breathing oddly soothing. “Hello, Sandeul,” she greets, and the collared shirt male gifts a laugh in the rich smile of his. Most quickly he moves, however, the hands that hindered the movement of the shoulders connected to the arms, and the proximity which caused his collared shirt to accident irritate the bare neck.

 

“Hey,” he replies in a sheepish mien after backing a step, almost suspicious as if the twenty-two year old knows that he might have been standing a little too close for someone who isn’t a significant other in status. “Starting with a healthy salad, huh.” She nods in affirmation, continuing her routine nonchalantly.

 

“I must say that you had surprised me with your presence this morning,” she admits tersely, the voice skimming the lake of emotions. Sandeul could not help but to react spontaneously to that. Startled, his mouth shoots. “That’s not very good then,” he exclaims aloud with eyes enlarging beyond their natural width. “I mean, if your other senses aren’t very sharp, they aren’t exactly going to make up for your anaphia.”

 

She stops cutting. Make a plaintive glance paired with a prim, thin smile. “I think you would prefer to live longer, and so you’d probably want to back off a little on my occasional discrepancies,” is a casual mention made with the innocent swivel of the knife. His face only pales.

 

Anaphia, also known as tactile anaesthesia, is a condition in which one is unable to feel due to a loss of the sense of touch. It has many reasons underlying behind this puzzling effect, with nerve damage being one of its highest contributors. More often than not, anaphia is a symptom of a greater health issue that can be hereditary. Her situation is one that turns out to be positively hereditary, and so it is evident that she has been numb to the physical realm since birth.

 

It is something that she has easily lived with without any stranger noticing until the university years. Perhaps she had been purely unlucky, or the time of inadvertent pretence was up for good. She had been scurrying around the campus block in a speed unmatched to get something done while holding a handful of books – what the task truly was, the memory cannot recall – and failed to notice a rather grave accident. Flower pots had been sorrowfully smashed onto the floor due to a stray soccer ball. The bits and pieces were scattered haphazardly on the ground, smirching the surface and making it a poor battlefield.

 

Tripped over the bits she did, having not seen them there and in her rush, carelessly made use of the sides to get up once again, regardless of the hazards. Her exposed feet were hurt and her palms were injured as well, but she merely continued ahead after picking the papered materials, with a slight wonderment as to why the speed of her legs had drastically decreased.

 

“Aren’t you aching by now?” articulated a male tone. For the first time, she came to realise that hey, there was someone else in the hallway after all. “Oh,” the girl had half-mumbled. “Hey there, random person.” She was waving to the stranger who seemed excessively anxious, having made her bewildered until her eyes spotted something new. Sticky, crimson liquid flowing downwards from the palms, straining the bloodstream of their perennial supply. A short, sincere, “Eh?” escaped the crevice of the windpipe and after the immediate clearing of the sharp broken remainders, he hurried her away to the infirmary by the hook of the arm.

 

“I must tell you that I have things to do,” she had asserted stubbornly, eyeing the stranger. The boy rummaged around swiftly in the infirmary while throwing the side, defiant glance at the girl seated on the bed. No response had escaped him except for the bandaging and taping of wounds. Albeit subdued, the spirit had remained untamed after the whole scenario. “Alright – I will most definitely thank you for that,” she had said with the quirk of the brow. “No more risks of infection and stuff. I will be going now, thanks again.” She made a move to stand which alarmed him since she shouldn’t be executing sudden movements, exacerbated by the weight of the books.

 

“Are you mad?” he interjected. “Does the pain not stop you?”

 

“I am unable to feel due to an inherited nerve damage condition,” she had explained briefly without missing a beat. “It’s a symptom of something greater but that kind of detail is unnecessary in your life. Thank you, anyway.” Her attempt to move was met with apprehension again. She remembered leering. “How do you make sure that you won’t get majorly hurt again?” he interrupted, worry framing the countenance.

 

That had gotten her to think for a few ephemeral seconds. She gave a rather terrible response and so he had thrown an audaciously reckless remark of, “I will look out for you somehow,” with a face so serious yet painted with a doltish redness at the revelation of what he has done.

 

“Why not,” she had mused, handing him a spare key to her apartment lot before walking out just like that. To his tame protest she mentioned that she would be dead-bolting the place at night so he need not worry about particular temptations. “That is completely not the point,” he had partially-yelled at last. “Well, wait, maybe but the thing is – you are giving a key to a stranger and you don’t even know his name!”

 

“So,” she had replied, making her way steadily to wherever she intended to. The twenty-two year old might have pulled his hair out back then. “I am convicted that you need some soul searching to do because that thinking of yours is more crazed than your abnormal situation,” he had flatly mentioned in defeat to her disappearing figure. “Yet I will have you to know that I’m Sandeul, or Lee Junghwan, whichever preferred.” Unbeknownst to her, he had scrunched up his face in callow distaste with a lingering notion.

 

“Have it not been a coincidence that we are floor-mates, I am certain that I would not even bother any more about someone so… incontestably peculiar.”

 

Thus, it is due to that unprecedented occasion that led the two lives to intertwine in ways unfathomable, in the most strangest of entanglements. Sandeul is certain that he has never found someone so catastrophically enchanting altogether. While their choice of major studies differ, but it is her he sees in the crowd of people most effortlessly, with the smile of hers that never quite manages to be the same all the time. She will not know or understand the moments he had been transfixed, lips too frozen to utter a greeting of hello and the shake called by society to be a wave. Like the crest of the wave, her figure collapses into a trough and drowns in the mass of people.

 

And that would be an opportunity wasted, yet cherished with the notions wondering of the things that could but never be.

 

Days pass, and it’s an earlier than usual morning that she has awoken to today. She murmurs something incoherent to herself, preparing for the activities ahead and habitually saunters to the kitchen. “Pancakes, huh…” is a dream half-heartedly wished, and so the items are withdrawn from appropriate locations. The batter is prepared, its contents tipped into the ready frying pan. Whilst that is being accomplished, the eyes are unable to restrain from looking outside by the use of the closed windows. The scenery is rather picturesque, with the way the trees and the little pellucid stream mingled together. She wonders how such things came to be in harmony.

 

A shocking crash followed by a tousled bespectacled male’s clumsy entrance snaps her thin trail of thinking. “Are you alright?” he mentions rhetorically as the twenty-two year old is already dragging her away from the frying pan firmly. A pinprick frown mars the female’s forehead. She eyes the spectacled boy with appointed scrutiny. “Your shoes, mister,” she could not help but to point out. Yet it is her hands that he holds, turning them over with such delicate care. Astonishing even herself, there are burnt marks on the palms.

 

“I knew it, frying things is never a good sign,” he mumbles sourly. He rummages about for bandages and other germane materials after switching the fire off while she sits by the dining table quite meekly. She just looks at him as he treats the affected hands, which makes him a nervous wreck and well, flustered. “If you really want pancakes, you could come over and I’ll make them for you,” suggests the companion with a speck of vulnerability. “It’s better than you burning yourself.” An exasperated sigh summarises the jumpy turmoil in his heart as he glances away, incapable of matching her straight gaze.

 

Her eyes trail to the bandaged hands, pondering softly in the whispers of the mind. She had always known that she would never feel the slick pressure a crisp page made when turned, or the rough surfaces conjured by painted canvases. Though the fingers do not have the functioning receptors, the side effects like getting hurt or falling sick still travelled along. She could see, she could hear, she could smell, she could speak, but she could not touch and sense it in her bones. It is like the separation made by a smooth, flat and dead glass wall.

 

Yet another glimpse of the worried male in front of her causes the smallest of smiles to channel warmth on her face. “I would love to, Lee Junghwan,” she replies at last regarding the pancakes, a hand stretched to pat his head. The bespectacled boy is hopelessly sure that he cannot bear any more surprises like this. In his rush, this appearance of his is one that the girl refers as Junghwan, while the neatly combed and non-spectacled appearance to be Sandeul. Simply because, but it is a charm he could never quite get enough of.

 

Her musical laugh tinkles, and while it might have been a bother to be unable to feel physically, she is assured that being able to feel in the medium of emotions isn’t a waste, after all.